Oh, what’s that? Just some Daleks cruising the halls of the LAX Marriot last weekend during the world’s largest and longest running Doctor Who convention, Gallifrey One, celebrating 50 years of Doctor Who and 24 years for the completely fan-run convention. Gallifrey One is a pilgrimage for Whovians of all kinds, offering plenty of Who-centric entertainment from their wonderful guests to sketch comedy shows to a fully judged Masquerade to one wild karaoke, where it isn’t unheard of for a guest or two to perform. I’m looking at you Tony Lee and Richard Dinnick.

But back to those Daleks, I managed to capture a short video of their hallway hi-jinks that you can watch below. There’s also a few more photos in the gallery at the end of this post, including ones where you can see many of the convention’s guests, like Sylvestor McCoy (7th Doctor), Nicholas Pegg (Dalek operator, otter), Frazer Hines (2nd Doctor companion, Jaime), and Dan Starkey (Sontaran Strax), signed one of the pepper pots.

The Daleks are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what the fans create and bring to show off at Gallifrey One. There’s everything from these fashionable Dalek hats,

to all of the amazing cosplay featured in the below gallery, plus some incredible prop and set reconstructions, like the 8th Doctor’s TARDIS console from Paul J. Salamoff,

Over on his blog, Honorary Doctor, you can find progress posts for all his creations, including the award winning Zygon from the gallery below. Salamoff and friends are also responsible for this awesome shot for shot remake of The Big Lebowski trailer with a Who twist. They need to hook up with this Dude– I mean Ood– wait, no, Ood Dude? Dude Ood? I don’t know, either way it was one of the funniest cosplays of the weekend,

There were a few of my favorite costumes I wanted to draw attention to, like these cute Dalek dresses by Sami Sloan and Gaby Ostrove. TARDIS dresses were a dime a dozen, but these Dalek dresses were a couple of standouts, complete with head gear,

I adored this Doctor Who/Sailor Moon mashup,

The Tardis Scout was made by Hannah of Cosessed. For more great cosplay, including an equally adorable TARDIS USO Girl, check out her Facebook page.

In addition to all the Who cosplay, there was a small but passionate group of Inspector Spacetime cosplayers. The notable one being Elyse Miller’s gender-swapped Inspector,

AND, here’s a little bit of fun trivia for you, it turns out Nerd Bastards has inadvertently played a small role in creating a piece of Inspector Spacetime lore. In an article where we interviewed Richey his first name appeared misspelled at “Tarvis.” Hey, we’re not perfect, mistakes happen, it’s since been changed, but had we not made the error fans would never have taken the name Tarvis and run with it like they did. Now TARVIS, which stands for The Autonomous Robotic Versatile Intelligent Squirrel, has his own wiki page and is rumored to be in Season 2 of an Untitled Web Series. Nerd Bastards: influencing Doctor Who, parody, spin-off culture since 2012.

At Gallifrey, it’s not only the people in costume, but vehicles get the cosplay treatment, too. Obi-Shawn of Road Squadron had his Z-Wing – plenty more pics, interior and exterior, below – parked nearby,

and was soon joined by Tom Hanks‘, the 10th Doctor not the actor, TARDIS motorcycle,

This was the first year in Gallifrey One’s 24 year history that the con ever sold out. It’s also the first year they ever capped attendance, but man, am I glad they did. A crowd of nearly 3, 500 is an ample number to fill a large room, leave standing room only as was the case for both Freema and Sylvestor’s panels on Saturday, but never stuff the room with so many attendees you can’t see, hear, or breath. Plus, the relatively manageable number of convention attendees allows for magical things like LobbyCon to happen. Where the lobby of the Marriot becomes a gathering spot for attendees and guests alike to drink too much and act silly.

As conventions go, Gallifrey is more on the fan celebration side of things than it is a place of media promotion and exhibition. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some fun exclusives you get to see and hear first at Gallifrey One. There was an exclusive screening of the 1st Doctor episode, “Airlock,” part 3 of the serial “Galaxy 4,” an episode only recently discovered and restored after being thought lost to history and the BBC’s ineptitude. No matter you’re opinion of Classic Who there was no denying the excitement over a lost piece of Who history being recovered.

Being the year of the 50th anniversary, Big Finish came prepared to share the trailer for their upcoming anniversary episode, The Light at the End, featuring Doctors one through eight. The audio trailer, which sounds epic, by the way, is now available online, give a listen,

There was also an interview with Steven Moffat recorded just for Gallifrey One in where The Moff discussed their big 5-0 plans as well as his thoughts on the series thus far. Thanks to interviewer Ed Stradling it’s also been posted online,

Registration for next years Gallifrey opens on March 8th and I guarantee you it will sell out again. Already confirmed guests are: Colin Baker, Katy Manning, John Levene, Richard Franklin, and Bruno Langle. And, I can report they’ll be trying their damnedest to book a certain lanky, sticky-up haired, squeaky voiced, former Doctor with an affinity for All-Star footwear. So book now, you never know who might show up.

Contributors

Buy Our Shirts

A news and entertainment blog for nerd pop culture. We are vulgar, debaucherous, and funny bastards that pilfer the internet (or interwebz, if you like) for the news you need so that you don't have to. You'll laugh, you'll cry and you'll often shake your fist in an angry fury but your time here is worth the price of admission (which is free for those of you not paying attention)